Eternity Formulae

Date:: 26 Feb–19 Jul 2026

Age:

Type:

Place:: Pump Room

Age restrictions: 6+

A project exploring the theme of cold in architecture, astrophysics, and art history.

The exhibition Eternity Formulae finds coldness in many and various fields of human activity: architecture, the fine arts, and astrophysics. From an ice throne in a freezer to laser flashes, from Rembrandt and Roerich to live artistic processing of astronomical data, the project connects space and time, showing how cold manifests itself in science, culture, and the structure of the universe.

Programme 

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The project consists of three independent parts or novellas, each developing a separate narrative.

The first section is centred around the story of what was one of the largest industrial refrigerators in Europe at the time of its construction. Its design was one of the last projects to emerge from the studio of Ivan Zholtovsky, the architect of many buildings that defined the Soviet skyline in the 1930s—1950s.

The next section, Winterreise, is devoted to the history of cold in European and Russian visual art from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. It brings together works from the largest Russian museum collections, interrogating the museum itself in its classic conception as a repository of cultural monuments, designed to protect exhibits from any undesirable changes—a form of cold storage room.

In the final section, cold appears as the ubiquitous background of the Universe itself and, at the same time, of the lives of its researchers. At the centre of the narrative is the phenomenon of relic radiation, which has uniformly filled the endless space of our Universe since the formation of the first atoms immediately after the Big Bang.

The project bridges the research of Russian scientists, the works of contemporary multimedia artists, and masterpieces by Jan Brueghel the Elder, Konstantin Korovin, Boris Kustodiev, Rockwell Kent, and other masters.

Exhibition facts

— An ice throne was created specifically for the display, housed within a refrigeration unit maintained at a temperature of —5°C to prevent melting.

— In the installation Cold Experiment, visitors can listen to live sounds from deep space.

— The public programme includes weekly lectures where scientists and science communicators explore the structure of the Universe and life on Earth (in Russian).

Booklet 

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Photos: Daniel Annenkov

Artists

Daria Arbuzova — John Augustus Atkinson — Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné — Abraham Beerstraaten — Karl Joachim Beggrow — Hans Bol — Vladimir Borovikovsky — Jan Brueghel the Elder — Andrei Cherkasov — Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis — Giovanni Antonio Cybei — William Elmes — Slava Fedorov — Artem Ignatiev — Severin Infante — Rockwell Kent — Konstantin Korovin — Korsi — Boris Kustodiev — Aleksei Medvedev — Anton Raphael Mengs — Alexander Moskvitin — Yuri Palmin — Alexandra Paperno — Olya Pegova — Ivan Prokofiev — Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn — Nicholas Roerich — Peeter Sneyers — Frits Thaulow — Nurlan Tortbayev — Boris Vorobyev — Elena Yuferova — Firs Zhuravlev

Curators
Yaroslav Aleshin, Sergey Babkin, Alexandra Kiseleva

Concept and research for the Winterreise section
Sergei Fofanov

Archival research for the Refrigerator section
Sergei Kozlovsky

Educational platform
Yulia Apanasenko, Stepan Ovchinnikov

Architecture
Sasha Kim

Producers
Varvara Arkhipova, Stacy Dementyeva, Veronica Luchnikova

Lighting
Ksenia Kosaya

Technical team
Andrei Belov, Artem Kanifatov, Pavel Luzhin, Mikhail Sarkisyants

Graphic design
Vasily Kondrashov

Accessibility and inclusion programmes team
Aleksandra Kharchenko, Vlad Kolesnikov, Victoria Kuzmina, Varya Merenkova, Vera Zamyslova

Art logistics and registration
Angelina Korovina, Daria Krivtsova, Daria Maksimova

Editors
Daniil Dugaev, Olga Grinkrug

English texts
Ben Hooson

Media specialist
Anastasia Melnikova-Belinskaya

The exhibition was organised in collaboration with
Central Scientific and Technical Library for Construction and Architecture
Russian State Archive of Literature and Art
Russian State Library
Shchusev Museum of Architecture
State Hermitage Museum
State Russian Museum
State Tretyakov Gallery